My Birthday Present

Mother bought me a book for my birthday: I'm very excited about it and can't wait to dive in!

Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity

The Earth's biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate. And while many books have focused on the expected ecological consequences, or on the aesthetic, ethical, sociological, or economic dimensions of this loss, this is the first to examine the full range of potential threats that a loss of biodiversity poses to human health.

Edited and written by Harvard Medical School physicians Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, with contributions by over 100 leading scientists, Sustaining Life presents a comprehensive view of how human medicines, biomedical research, the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, and the production of food, both on land and in the oceans, depend on biodiversity.

The book's ten chapters cover everything from what biodiversity is and how human activity threatens it to how we as individuals can help conserve the world's richly varied biota. Seven groups of organisms, some of the most endangered on Earth, provide detailed case studies to illustrate the contributions they have already made to human medicine, and those they are expected to make if we do not drive them to extinction.

Drawing on the latest research, but written in language a general reader can easily understand, Sustaining Life argues that we can no longer see ourselves as separate from the natural world, nor assume that we will be unharmed by its alteration. Our health depends on the health of other species and on the integrity and vitality of natural ecosystems.

With a foreword by E.O. Wilson and a prologue by Kofi Annan, and more then 200 poignant color illustrations, Sustaining Life contributes essential perspective to the debate over how humans affect biodiversity and a compelling demonstration of the human health costs.